Time Tables
by Glitterglue
Summary: She could make the pretty lies he refused to tell sound righteous and golden, humming with honesty that he had no right to be near. A summer in Westchester. KYRO.
1. June

disclaimer: not mine

A/N: another one...

**June**

14th

No one thought that Logan would be his biggest supporter. That the naturally suspicious and jaded man would be so adamant about giving him a second chance. But when they all thought about it, it made sense. The older man saw a lot of himself in the youth. He had made mistakes too. He had been angry and violent once. And he had also turned around and started down the twisted and barbed path to something that resembled redemption. If he could make that choice and be accepted after what might have been decades of bad deeds, then a few months away with the enemy shouldn't be enough to condemn John Allerdyce.

"He's dangerous," Storm argued.

"So am I," Logan responded calmly.

"He's killed people," she replied.

"So have I," was his answer again. "_So have you_."

"What if he's a spy? What if Magneto sent him?"

"Come on, Storm," he sighed. "Do you really think Magneto would send him here, the place is practically crawling with people who can read his mind. Besides, no one trusts him, who's gonna tell him our secrets?"

"I just don't get it," she shook her head. "Magneto has his powers back. He's trying to start his war again. It's not like John has no where else to go. Why come back now when the Brotherhood needs him?"

Logan frowned, knowing all too well what brought John back to Westchester. "Maybe he got tired of being the bad guy."

15th

"So what the verdict, Bossman?" John asked as Logan entered his room. It was just that, a room, a spare left by a student who decided homesickness was worse than the ridicule he faced at a regular school. The other teens knew he was there and generally gave his doorway a wide berth. _Why isn't he in a cell? Why isn't he locked up?_ John was wondering the same things himself. The first thing he did after being delivered to his new living space was check to see if he was locked in. He wasn't. He could roam the halls and terrorize the kids if he wanted, and when he got especially bored, it was tempting.

"You can stay." John raised his eyebrows at that, it was not the answer he expected. "There's only a few days left in this term so you can't really graduate this year-"

"Bobby and Rouge will be devastated," he muttered under his breath.

"-and then there's summer," Logan went on as if he hadn't said a word. "You can stay for that too. If you want you can stay all the way through next year and at least _pretend_ you're learning something. After that, I don't know, you'll be your own man."

"And if I decide I don't want to stay?" he wanted to know.

"I give you to Storm. You're the one who came back here, Pyro. You play by our rules now."

20th

Too much had happened for her to just go home. It didn't work like that. She was a soldier now, she had seen blood pooling on the ground, smelled the acrid fumes and heard the screams and howls of the battle. No person, no seventeen year old girl, woman now, could just turn around and head back to Illinois and spend the summer with her family and pretend they all didn't know what she had done and seen and just how much she had changed. It didn't work like that.

But after a few days of wandering the halls of the mansion alone, her friends graduated or vacationing, the teachers planning their next maneuvers against the Brotherhood or living their own lives, and Bobby and Rogue having disappeared to who knew where to figure out their own future, she began to regret it. Someone had changed the codes that gave her access into the underground floors, much less the Danger Room. Storm and Logan had been dodging her questions about it and almost anything else for that matter. And she had a sinking suspicion she knew why.

"Do you think I'll hurt myself training down there alone?" she shrieked. "I'm not that stupid! I can take care of myself!"

"You're a young girl, Kitty," Storm murmured patronizingly. "And you've been through a lot this past year, we all have. Why don't you want to take a break from training for a while?"

"I'm not a child anymore, Storm," she argued. "You made sure of that."

It was a cruel thing to say, she knew. Scott would have never recruited her for the X-men if her skills and powers hadn't been needed, but he wasn't there and it was easy to blame the other woman for her loss of innocence. And she couldn't help that she wanted something to be easy again.

And that brought her attention to the presence of John Allerdyce, the very definition of unease and innocence lost. The thought that he was breathing the same air as her sent memories of burning cars and scorched earth flashing across her internal vision. She knew that even if she tried to avoid him it wouldn't really work. For the all the room and sheer scale of the mansion there were only so many places the two of them could go. So she didn't even try. She didn't even attempt to stay out of his way and prevent an awkward and mostly likely negative run in. Why should she make anything easy for him? He obviously wasn't thinking about the school's condition when he walked out.

They had never been close but before he left she thought she could count him as a familiar acquaintance, at least. A comforting warmth beside her if not an adept conversationalist or confidante. They weren't friends, but than again, John wasn't really friends with anyone. He was just John.

27th

A week had gone by since the school had emptied for the season and her mounting frustrations were bringing her to the verge of implosion. Logan and Storm were in the bottom levels, going over some intel Warren had brought in on the movement of Magneto's camp. That much she knew because that much Warren had told her, but nothing more.

"Logan said to leave you out of this one, Katherine," he told her apologetically.

"But I'm an X-man!" she shouted. "I'm part of the team, why wont they let me help?"

"Ease up, Kitty." Warren said while walking away quickly, unwilling to get into what were becoming more and more frequent verbal spats with the young woman. "Enjoy your summer as a kid, that's what they want for you, to just be a kid. Don't worry about what they're doing down there."

The unfairness of the situation stung. She was allowed to fight, she was allowed to put her life on the line only a handful of months earlier but now she was a kid again? It didn't _work_ like that.

"What'd you do to deserve that shut out?" a voice wondered from behind her. She spun around to find the source, already knowing a line that insensitive and tasteless could come from only one mouth. There he was, the flame throwing former enemy in the flesh, leaning against the wall holding a sandwich. He took a satisfying bite out of it as she scowled at him.

"Hello, John. Welcome back," she sneered sarcastically.

"Maybe they don't trust you," was his reply. She gaped at him, burning and shaking at the fact that he of all people was talking to her about trust. At the fact that he was probably right.

"Fuck you," she growled before sinking into the floor. _Coward_, she told herself

30th

He was in the kitchen a few days later when she came down for a midnight snack. More like early morning, she thought to herself. It was past four AM.

He was sitting at the bar holding a bottle of water between his hands and looked up slowly when she entered the room. She stopped, temporarily stilling while she decided if staying in the same room with someone who would probably insult her again was worse than the sacrifice of her pride that would come with turning and fleeing the room. In the end pride won out, which she had expected from the start, it was her last name after all.

"I couldn't sleep either," he said to her. It was probably intended to be a peace offering, the only flimsy apology he would offer, but she was too tired and generally angry to care.

She walked non-chalantly over to the cabinets she knew held granola bars and cookies without saying a word, careful to give off an air of disinterest.

"I meant what I said, Kitty," he told her back as she reached to grab the Oreos.

"Oh, I'm sure you did John. You probably know exactly what it looks like to have someone not trust you," she responded, still not meeting his gaze.

He clenched his fists around his drink and exhaled sharply, his upper lip pulling into an ugly expression. "_I do_," he told her matter of factly, "but that's not how I meant it."

"Then how did you mean it?" she burst at him, throwing the unopened pack of cookies onto the counter. "How the fuck am I supposed to take a comment like that? I didn't do anything for them to stop trusting me! _Anything!_ And yet I'm being punished and you…You're allowed to roam the damn halls like you _belong _here. So tell me, John, how did you mean it."

He looked at her with confused, glazed eyes, like the sight of her was too much for his brain to comprehend.

"What _happened_ to you?" he asked quietly.

"What do you mean?" she snarled.

"You…You used to tell me that people who cussed were just too lazy to think of intelligent things to say. Remember that?" he scolded.

"Jesus John, a fourteen year old girl said that to you. I've changed."

He laughed abruptly and it ended up sounding more like he was choking. "That's obvious. I'm just trying to figure out when."

"When?" she stalked closer to him, the anger and resentment and confusion that had taken root and wrapped around her life finally bringing her to the breaking point. "When? How about the night Scott woke me up and asked me to walk into the fucking White House, you know, before he_ died_. Before Jean died, before the Professor died. Before they turned my into some goddamn fighting machine they think they can turn on and off. Take you pick!"

"I lost them too, Kitty!" he yelled, standing up so rapidly the stool he had been perched on fell over and clattered loudly on the tile floor.

"Go to hell, Pyro, you don't get to start caring now!"

"_This_ is why they don't trust you anymore! Don't you understand? I get that you're sad and pissed and probably really, really lonely, but that's no excuse for you to act like this!"

"Like what?"

"Like I used to."

His words ripped her open. Because it was true and they both knew it. How had the roles been reversed so quietly and quickly, without her realizing? Two tears that felt cold when they slid across her flushed cheeks slowly meandered down her face and eventually stopped at her chin.

"This conversation is over. Enjoy your water and your insomnia."


	2. July1

disclaimer: not mine

**July**

3rd

"What are you doing here?" It came out rude and blunt, which she didn't really intend. It's just that she was so used to coming there and knowing that she wouldn't be disturbed. No one really hung out in a graveyard, even one as small as this, so it was a shock to round the corner of the hedges and see John standing in front of the Professor's tombstone wearing a solemn expression.

"I wasn't here for the funerals. I'm just paying my respects. I'm not desecrating their graves or anything, Kitty," he explained with crassness that was only half-assed.

"I'll leave."

"I don't care either way," he answered, but she got the impression that he didn't want to be alone right then, even if his company was someone as uncivil as her. So instead of turning and going back inside, she moved forward to stand with him, shoulder to shoulder.

"How did you find out…about him," she gestured towards the stone marker.

"Magneto told me," he answered. She closed her eyes, unable to stop the flow of memories that brought her back to the news when she received it. It came to her in flashes. Logan. Blood. Storm. Blood. Tears. Dead Eyes.

_He'sgoneshekilledhimhe'sgoneIcouldn'twecouldn'thecouldn'tsavehimself._

"Were you sad?" she asked quietly. His head jerked and he stared down at her with a mixture of disgust and distain. Like she was the stupidest person he had ever laid eyes on.

"_Of course_ I was sad," he pushed out past his clenched teeth. He swung his head back to stare at the granite before them.

"I left because I didn't belong here, not because I didn't give a shit, especially about him. So stop acting like you're the only person in this place whose lost something."

"Why _did _you come back, then? If you so obviously didn't belong?" She stepped in front of him, forcing the taller boy to meet her gaze, looking for a way to hurt him because she was so damn weary from hurting all alone.

"Did you get tired of taking orders from a psycho? Or was it because you _cared so much_ about the rest of us?" He moved to turn away from her but she only shifted herself to maintain the position.

"Answer me! Come on, Pyro, tell me real reason for your return, did they kick you out of their little, fucking club?" she said mockingly.

"I wanted a life!" he finally yelled, grabbing her by the arms and forcing her back a few paces. "I wanted my own life, after all of this is done! Not in some jail cell or hospital bed or still the right hand man! Why is that so hard to believe? I've seen this movie, Kitty, I've read this book! The bad guys don't win, we never do! I'm not stupid, I'm giving myself a second chance."

"So you decided to come back here and ask for mercy from the good guys?" she accused condescendingly.

He finally released her arms, a little surprised that she hadn't phased through his hands and straightened.

"Oh Kitty…" he said softly. He raised his arm and it looked like he might touch her cheek, but then his hand dropped.

"There are no good guys." he whispered cruelly.

This time he walked away.

7th

Four AM found her standing in front of his door, fist poised to knock, needing to talk to him or fight with him or just sit there and glare at him, anything but spending another night alone with only the thoughts and images in her head. But she didn't, she just stood there for several long minutes, listening to the sound of him thrashing around in bed, clutched by some nighttime horror. She stood there with her hands clenched at her sides until the noises died down. Then she returned to her own bed and hoped he didn't hear her do the same.

8th

Four AM found her standing in front of his door, again, straining her ears to hear any sounds that would reveal if he was in there, perhaps he was out wandering the halls just as she was. But no, there was the rustling of bed sheets and the low, pained mummers of someone dreaming of dark things. She clenched her fingers into tiny fists, just as she had the night before. Only this time she didn't have the patience or the spite to stand there and listen to his tortured mutterings.

Without giving it much thought, she phased into the wall that she knew his bed would be pushed against and walked. She used her judgment, blind inside the solid object, and slowly lowered herself down. When she opened her eyes, she was laying face up under John Allerdyce's bed.

She slowly raised her hands and pushed them through the mattress until her palms were pressed against the skin of his back. And she held them there, feeling his pulse under her fingers, and cried, hot tears soaking the hair around her temples. Whispering to herself over and over again until she could barely recognize the words, "I am a good person, I am a good person , I_ am_ a good person."

She stayed like that until he was silent, breathing deeply and regularly. Then she returned to her own bed.


	3. July 2

disclaimer: not mine

**July**

12th

He was waiting for Logan, leaning casually outside his bedroom door, knowing that the older man would be returning from his nightly dinner with Storm, Warren, and occasionally Dr. McCoy in the kitchens. He watched as his surly form rounded the corner from the main rooms, swinging a six pack of Molson in one hand. He cocked a bushy eyebrow at John before wordlessly handing him a beer and steering them both onto a nearby terrace so he could have a cigar.

"What's the problem, Allerdyce?" Logan asked without preamble, his words somewhat muffled by the cigar between his lips.

"Who said there was a problem?" John responded, popping off the beer cap on the stone ledge.

"Fine, drink up before Storm catches you," was Logan's easy answer. And he did, both men drinking in silence that was unhurried and comfortable. He should have known Logan wouldn't push him to talk, the spoken word being something neither of them were completely untroubled by. John finished his drink first, putting the empty bottle back into the cardboard caddy and rubbed his hands against his jeans. Logan didn't look at him, but stubbed out his smoke in acknowledgement that John was going to say something.

"When did it happen?"

"What?"

"The Shadowcat."

Logan frowned at the question, violently swigging the last of his beer out of the bottle and instantly opening another. "So I guess you've talked to her," he finally replied. John nodded.

"If talking's what you want to call it. It's more like her verbally scratching me up."

"She hasn't said a word to me or Ororo since we locked her out of the basement."

"Why doesn't she just phase down there?" John asked.

Logan shrugged, "Maybe she does, but I think she wont until we give her permission, she's still the old Kitty in some ways." Logan snorted humorlessly, "Old Kitty." He felt ashamed that he had started to think of her as two different people. Two different people who received two different amounts of love and affection in his mind. He found it hard to look at this new person with the same fatherly devotion.

"You haven't answered my question. When I left she wasn't like this."

"A lot of things were different before you left, boy," and John knew Logan was seeing the form of a living, breathing, smiling redhead behind his eye lids.

"I think…I think what changed in her was that she wasn't there for them…when they died."

"She blames herself?" John's forehead creasing with incomprehension. "That's stupid. What could she have done even if she was there?"

"Exactly." Logan leaned forward in his chair, staring unseeingly over the gardens. "There's nothing she could've done. She a little girl, she's physically weak, and her power…her power doesn't save people, she can only use it to save herself. Maybe she hates it for that."

"For saving her? For helping her survive?" John whispered.

"People like you and me will never understand something like that, John. We'll never get how someone can feel worse for living."

"You think she wanted to die." John felt his heart beat faster.

"I don't know," Logan murmured. "I don't know."

He handed John another beer before going inside to get a couple more six packs.

13th

It was just past midnight when he decided that he needed to talk to her. Because Logan had cut him off at nine beers. That was the only reason he could come up with. He had had nine beers and he needed to talk to her. If he had been a little more sober or a little more drunk he wouldn't have gone. Because in those two states of mind he would have understood that the thought of facing her on purpose was completely terrifying. That the thought of needing her for anything, even if it was just something as basic as conversation, was frightening and a little ridiculous.

He knocked on her door. She answered.

"What?" she asked blandly, she looked exhausted.

"Can I come in?"

"You smell like booze."

"Is that your answer?"

She looked up at him strangely, trying the gauge if this was some kind of trick or joke, eventually opening the door a little wider so he could come inside. Her room was extremely clean, with the inexplicable aura that no one really lived there, interrupted only by a worn copy of _The Giver_ resting open on her pillow. Her room smelled, or maybe felt, like something he couldn't quite define. His brain, a bit dazed, finally settled on summer and old. Old seasons or loud voices or girlish giggles. Just old things that weren't there anymore, gone, but the memory of it still trapped in the molecules they had once been paired with. He stood awkwardly in the middle of the room, she slowly sat down on her bed, staring blankly at the palms of her hands.

"I'm sorry, Kitty," he finally spoke after what felt like an eternity. It wasn't what he had been planning on saying, but when he thought back on it, he couldn't remember what he was going to say anyway.

She looked up at him quickly, "Excuse me?"

"I'm sorry. For everything. For what's happened and what's going to happen and because I wasn't here to see it. I'm sorry for all of it."

"You're drunk." she said softly, like that made all the difference.

"Since when does alcohol compel people to lie?" he asked, backing up into the wall and then sliding down it so he could sit, wishing she'd get angry or sad or something, _anything_ but the quiet expression of resignation in her gaze. "I mean what I say, Kitty, I meant every word I've ever said to you. That's me being honest."

"Then can I ask you a question and get an honest answer?"

"I promise." If she had been a statue, he swears she would have begun to crumble them, the pieces of herself to heavy and poorly put together to stay put any longer.

"Do you think…do you think that I," she closed her eyes and breathed heavily, like the words were too hard to grasp and shove out of her mouth, "Do you think that I deserved…" she opened her eyes and stared at him, silently begging him to answer even thought she hadn't really asked anything yet.

"Yeah, Kitty," he said truthfully, "I think you deserved to live."

Before he knew what had happened, before the neurons that sparked in his brain could tell him what was taking place, she had phased under her bed, laying in the dark and crying little silent tears that curiously reminded him of his nightmares for a brief moment. Before his brain could take the time to tell his muscles what he wanted of them, he had moved to lay next to her, studying the underside of her box spring with surreal interest, gripping her hand. She didn't care that he still smelled like beer and he didn't care that her fingers nails were pressing tiny parentheses into the back of his hands.

"I'm glad you made it too, John," she sobbed suddenly.

_But you don't think I deserved it_, he thought.


	4. July 3

disclaimer: not mine

**July**

17th

She walked around the grounds without any aim that she could determine, at least telling herself that she had no ulterior motive in the action. She wasn't looking for anyone.

She wasn't secretly hoping to run across anyone.

She wasn't deliberately making herself visible from a window on the fourth floor should someone peer outside and so happen to see her ambling around.

And she most, most, most, most definitely wasn't thinking about John through all of it. That would be stupid. She promised herself that she wasn't that stupid.

He had lain with her under her bed for at least an hour. Her tears drying and making her face feel sticky and tight. She watched him stare straight forward, his hand still gripping hers firmly and, in a way, painfully. But it was a comfort and that made the little hurt worth it. She felt unstable. Drunk off of the fact that he was drunk and that things were so fucking fucked up. How had she let things get like this? How had her life collapsed into something so jagged and unfamiliar and not seen it happen? Seventeen, estranged from her family, frightening her friends, and feeling this strange and altogether intolerable reliance on John Allerdyce.

"You can leave now, if you want, John," she said, not taking her eyes off of him.

He swallowed forcibly and licked his lips. "Do you want me to leave?" He asked. No, she didn't.

"I don't know what I want anymore."

"I don't believe that," he told her with certainty, finally turning his head, an expression that was much too calculating for his state of mind painted onto his face.

And then he was gone.

18th

He knew she what she was trying to do and he wanted to tell her to stop. To stop walking around so hopelessly. To stop sitting up all night in the kitchen, following the lines in the tile counter top until her eyes started watering. He didn't have to see her to know it was what she was doing, because it was what he was doing too.

Or had been.

For the past five days he had been holed up in his dorm room like some kind of convict, waiting for the warden to knock on his door and lead him away to receive his condemnation. _Warden Katherine Pryde_, it had a nice ring to it, a solid title, much better than Shadowcat.

It was her turn, that's what his excuse was. The reason he was avoiding (not _hiding,_ he told himself quickly) from her. Because it was her turn to make the next move, to tell him what exactly it was that she wanted from him, from life, from herself. So maybe if she did then he would know the answers to those questions himself.

It wasn't because his fingers practically itched to reach out and touch her, just to see if she'd let him. It wasn't because he got the undeniable urge to grab her by the shoulders and shake her, screaming at her to just fucking _smile_ again whenever he was near her. And it most certainly wasn't because he felt like someone had punched him in the place where his neck and chest meet when she told him she was glad he was alive.

Regardless it _was_ her turn.

19th

He wasn't having another nightmare, that much was obvious. The sounds that were coming from the other side of the door were normal and steady, other than the fact that the noises told her he was awake period. It was the middle of the night, he shouldn't have been pacing back and forth loudly.

Her instincts told her to either turn around and go somewhere, _anywher_e, else, or to just boldly phase through the wooden barrier separating them and demand to know what in the world she was supposed to be feeling. About what she had decided she wanted, and what she had decided she didn't.

But she couldn't get herself to do either, because shit, look at what her instincts had gotten her lately.

So she knocked on the door. And he answered.

"Are you drunk?" he asked sheepishly, dark circles under his eyes deepening in the harsh light that slid into the dark hallway from behind him.

"I'm sober, scout's honor," she answered, fidgeting anxiously.

"Do you want to come in?" he opened the door a little wider so she could see inside. It offered a view that she hadn't been afforded from under the bed in the dark. It was a wreak, books and clothes and scraps of paper with burned edges and sketches littering the floor and covering the desk. It looked like a physical manifestation of his personality, spilling out of him because his body just wasn't strong enough to keep it all inside the confines of his skin anymore. It would have felt like trespassing to go inside his room while the lights were on and he was awake. Like injecting herself into something far too personal for her to deal with.

"I was actually hoping you'd come with me...somewhere," she responded, holding out her hand. He raised his eyebrow and she could practically read the lude innuendoes he was swallowing, and took her offered palm.

"What did you have in mind?" The words were still coming out of his mouth when he realized he was sinking into the floor.

He looked around himself incredulously once he regained his balance. Phasing wasn't something he had ever experienced before and he was quite certain it was something he never wanted to go through again. It was completely unnerving, not being able to _feel anything_. Knowing that even if he reached out with all his strength and will, everything would just pass through his fingers.

Everything except Kitty's hand, which was still solid and warm in his. He knew it was still in his grasp as his gaze swept the room and he knew he could let it go, but he didn't. He didn't want to.

"What is this place?" he looked around, pushing his hair out of his face with his free hand.

"It's a cell," she answered, her voice tinged with regret. Not matter how many times she had been there she had never gotten used to the subtle power the room exuded. Never became comfortable with the way even her quiet breathing echoed oddly off of the ceiling.

"A prison cell," John responded uneasily, he didn't like how skewed and warped versions of himself and Kitty seemed to be watching him from all four of the shiny, blank walls. He raised a suspicious eyebrow at her, "Why did you bring me here?"

Kitty's head lowered, her form giving off the corrosive taint of guilt, she released his hand and sat down against the wall, her knees folded up, like she needed that extra barrier to really feel safe. She looked down at her hands and sighed forcefully, "You know you ruined everything, don't you?"

"What?"

"When I found out you were back, this is the first place I went. I figured you'd be here."

He frowned and sat down next to her, their legs just barely touching, "To be perfectly honest, so did I."

"I came here to talk to you. Because I knew you would be down here and you would be awful, you would be so much worse than when you left. You were going to say really mean and terrible things to me. You were going to call me names and tell me I was stupid for fighting on this side and that I was a naive little girl. And I was going to leave feeling better, knowing that I was better than you, that I was right and that you were wrong. But you _weren't_ here. You were up there. And, if anything, you've made me feel worse, bad, about the person I am now. This wasn't how it was supposed to play out. At all."

"I never meant to make you feel like that, Kitty," he interjected.

"But you have. And the worst part is that you're right. Am I who I used to be? Be honest, is this the girl you expected when you came back?"

He studied her face carefully. She didn't look upset, she just looked..._there_. For the first time since he had come back, she looked like she was actually there, inside of her head and inside of her body.

"I expected a naive little girl, I did, you're right. I expected you to be here, to come to me and tell me that I had done the right thing and that I could be the good guy now and that everyone deserves a second chance. That's what I was waiting for."

She turned her head and stared at him intently, her mouth upturning into something that might have been considered an apologetic smile if there was actually some feeling behind it, "I'm sorry I couldn't be that for you."

"Fuck Kitty, no," he leaned forward and put his hand on her neck, laughing quietly, because he thought he would explode if he didn't do something to relieve the pressure in his chest. That his body would actually combust into nothing but millions of minisule shards of bone and drops of blood, leaving a grisly mess all over the previously imaculate walls. "If that's who you had been...I probably would have said all those things to you just because being told I could be good again would piss me off so damn much. I wouldn't want to talk to you, much less care about you. I don't want to be good or bad or any of that bull shit. I just want to be alive, you know, breathing."

He watched then, as something in her body seemed to shift or melt or maybe turn on again. Her mouth twisted up and it took him several seconds to realize she was smiling. Granted, it was small and strained and looked a little sorrowful, but it was a smile none the less. It made him want to grab her by the shoulders and shake her and scream, 'Did I give you this? Did I give you this, Kitty?'

"Did you just say you cared about me?"

John sighed abruptly, smiling back, "Way to pick the one line that was not at all the point of our conversation."

"I think it was the exact point of the conversation," she blushed and John didn't know if he wanted to run or kiss her.

He decided on run.

His brain said run.

But his legs wouldn't move. All he could do was grin at her and whisper, "It's good to see you smile."

"You too," she answered.


	5. July 4

A/N: I can't make any excuses for the gigantic delay for this chapter. Laziness and writer's block, that's all I can say.

Disclaimer: not mine

**July**

20th

When he looked at her the way he had the night before, his eyes soft and safe, smiling like they were sharing in some private joke, she didn't care.

She didn't care that it was wrong.

Kitty didn't think about the look on Bobby's face when (and if) he came back and found her going to someone else for comfort when her fears took hold. She didn't acknowledge the inevitable expression of shock in her mother's eyes when she recognized the name of the boy her daughter was so enamored with. She refused to spare a thought on the probable back lash he would receive, and her by association, when he ventured out into the world and her name was paired with his.

Because he was looking at her like she was beautiful and whispering tentative words about her smile while staring at her lips like they were made of solid gold.

Or flames, because that was what John seemed to treasure above all else.

She didn't care as she was leaning against the door behind her. Him walking her to her bedroom and squeezing her hands like a school boy on a first date. And she didn't trust herself to not fumble awkwardly with the door handle because the heat that radiated off of his body was making her lightheaded, so she simply bit her lip shyly and wished him a good night, and phased through the wood, promptly slumping against it as her atoms solidified.

22nd

She dreamt her feet took her down the stainless steel hall, past the prison cell her mind wished to forget, and into the Danger Room. It had been set to a simulation she didn't recognize and she had to grit her teeth as her bare feet hit the soggy snow. She walked farther into the room, sinking to her ankles in the frozen landscape. She wound her way through gray, thin trees, unnerved by the groaning of their low hanging branches, complaining of the snow weighing down their limbs.

She found him laying in the ice, his own internal temperature turning the ground around him into a slippery and messy puddle of mud and slush. He was shirtless and shivered violently.

"John, what's wrong with you? What are you doing?" she asked, surprised by the amount of concern in her voice as she knelt and tried to force him to sit up. But he stubbornly squared his shoulders and stayed pressed against the dirt.

"I'm training, Kitty," he responded coolly. "And you're distracting me."

"Training? How is this training? What's wrong with you?" she asked again, her tone rising in pitch with her confusion.

"A lot of things. A lot of things are wrong with me. But I'm pretty sure you already knew that, huh, Kitty?" he shrugged, his shoulders shifting the muck beneath him and making it stick to his bare skin. "I'm not even that cold anymore."

"I am," Kitty told him fiercely, tugging at his forearms, willing him to stand, "I'm freezing, John, it's too cold in here."

He easily wrested his arms from her hands, glaring at her with mild annoyance and something else she couldn't make out. "Then just leave already. If it bothers you that much, just go. If not, lay down. Just leave or lay down."

She stared at the trees as they swayed quietly in a subtle breeze and wondered what all of this was supposed to mean as her legs folded out from under her. And while the inescapable mud and damp soaked into her hair and through her clothes to her back, she was surprised to realize that no, she really wasn't even that cold anymore either.

23rd

She woke up feeling warm and safe, alone and calm. That's when she finally allowed herself to take a deep breathe of non-John scented air and spread out the big picture onto a dirty looking table behind her closed eyelids, caring about the answers she would discover.

The big picture told her two things: This was wrong.

And there was absolutely nothing she could do about it now.

She was able to identify the emotion in his face, supplied by her new state of consciousness, that had been paired with irritation when he had given her his dream ultimatum. Fear. He was scared she would go.

But she laid down, she did not leave.

27th

"What are you going to do a year from now?"

"Huh?" she had been concentrating intently on the game board in between them, her competitive wiles kicking in and refusing to lose another match to him. They were sitting cross legged on the common room floor, engaged in a brutal tournament of checkers, the only other games available being chess and the foos ball table. Before that morning, Kitty would have considered herself an adept chess player, until coming up against John.

"There's a lot more down time than you'd think when you're a bad guy," he had explained, packing up the set while she pouted about her fourth consecutive loss. "And Magneto loved him some chess."

"In a year you'll graduate, what are you planning on doing then?" he clarified.

"Oh, well," she leaned back, stretching her back much like the feline she was named after, "I haven't really thought about it in a while. I guess I should start applying to colleges, I mean, that was the plan before..." Her eyes unfocused, something he noticed always occurred when she thought about the war. "I guess, I'll just have to see what's going on then. I might be needed here."

"Hm."

She tilted her head and watched him curiously while he studied the board. "That's it? 'Hm.' "

He reached out and shifted a red piece, a move that looked meaningless to her, but she was certain had well planned strategy behind it. She was beginning to suspect the entire conversation was being manipulated in the same fashion.

"What if...what if you're needed here forever?" John questioned.

"Just ask what you really want to ask," she responded pointedly.

"Fine. Are you willing to give up everything for these people? For this place? If Storm comes up to you five minutes after graduation and tell you that you're needed here forever, would you do it? That's what I really wanted to ask."

"Yes," Kitty affirmed immediately.

He shook his head in disbelief, giving her a watered down look of disappointment, "You don't even have to think about it?"

"No, I don't. I'd stay. Because it's the right thing to do."

John leaned over the board suddenly, scattering the pieces every which way with his elbows, and held her shoulders much like he had a couple of weeks earlier in the graveyard. "Kitty, listen to me," he said hoarsely. "If you do that, if you stay here, you will die. Do you fucking _understand _that? Believe me, fighting like that, it will get you _killed_."

She blinked at him, an obvious attempt to hide her watering eyes. "John," she whispered, "Don't _you_ understand? Doing the right thing..." she sighed and placed her hands over his, squeezing gently. "It's all I have. It's all I have left."

"No, Katherine," he argued sternly, "It's not. I promise you, it's not."

She nodded slowly and pursed her lips, before glancing down at the ruined checker board.

"Don't worry about it," John murmured quietly, "I was going to win anyway."


	6. August 1

disclaimer: not mine

A/N: God, I hope people are still reading this.

**August**

2nd

There were certain aspects of her life, this new life that she had been living, that would suddenly and chillingly remind Kitty that she had, in fact, died in the war. That the girl who smiled at strangers at the supermarket and walked down the hall without looking over her shoulder and blushed hotly whenever Bobby Drake gave her attention had been ripped apart and scattered all over Alcatraz like so many others. She isn't and will never be sure who did it.

Was it Jean? No, she refused to believe that.

Phoenix? Most likely.

Pyro?

_Pyro?_

...John?

Maybe. But if it had been, could she really hold it against him? He had spent the past several weeks scouring the ground, collecting all the broken bits of her that he could find and stitching them back together. And when there was a hole or an area stretched a little too thin, he tore out a part of himself and filled up her missing pieces. And he did without making himself any weaker.

Only making her stronger.

Those were the thoughts circling her head as she filled out college applications.

That...and that she was done dancing.

4th

John had read enough books and poems, short stories and novellas, to know that the phrase 'Dancing around each other' was the most cliche line anyone could use concerning physical attraction that had yet to be acted on. And while the line did apply, (or so he hoped) he wasn't going to use it. Think it.

He thought they were more like boxers fighting. Jabbing, blocking, dodging, and attacking. Circling each other, sizing each other up, trying to figure out when and who would make the first move.

Either way, he was getting tired of this match. He wanted round two to begin.

5th

"Logan?" she asked quietly, pushing on his open door. "Logan, are you in here?"

As the door swung open, she could see him rising from where he had been sitting at his desk, hurriedly stuffing some faded and well worn pictures into a shoe box before pushing it under his bed. She caught a flash of red hair before the last of them were hidden below the lid. His eyes were red.

"So we're talking now, Kit?" he questioned sarcastically, but his mouth was quirked on one side and that was all it took for her to know that he wasn't really angry at her, merely slightly annoyed.

"I didn't know we weren't," she shot back in a similar tone.

He shook his head, hair mussed and sticking out at comical angles, "Well, that's what people tend to think whenever they're avoided for a month straight and never spoken to," he answered.

Kitty sighed and moved forward to sit on the edge of his bed, "I was mad. And I was hurt. And I...I know I wasn't, haven't been acting like myself."

He nodded, "Can't really blame you, kid. But you said 'was,' that mean you're going to go back to that sweet little girl we all knew?"

"You know I can't do that, Logan. You know I can't bring her back, all the way. And I don't think I would, even if I was able," she shifted on the comforter, prodding around inside herself from the guts to finish this conversation, needing to get it over with. "I know that you and Storm don't like it, but you're all going to have to get used to it, because, like it or not, it's partly your doing."

"Listen, Kitty," he began to growl, "you know that if I had my way-"

"I know," she cut him off, "I know that if it was up to you none of this would have ever happened. Me and Rouge and Peter and Bobby wouldn't of had to fight. But we did. You asked us and we said 'yes,' it happened Logan, all of it, even though you wish it hadn't."

"You remind me of Jean sometimes," he said suddenly and quietly.

"How so?" Kitty whispered fearfully, she had never heard this man sound so old before.

"She died. And then she came back...different. She came back cold and hard and just fucking_ wrong_. I can't explain it, but I...can't forget it. And you, you came back..."

"Broken," she finished for him.

He shrugged, looking anywhere but at her.

"I'm not broken anymore, Logan. I've just been put back together in a different order. Please see that."

He nodded again, this time with much more resolve and turned back to his desk and scribbled something onto a piece of scrap paper.

"The codes to the basement. I never should have changed them in the first place. I just couldn't...if you had ended up like her..." he trailed off.

"Never Logan, _never_ like her," she murmured before pushing herself off of the bed and heading for the door.

"Kitty," Logan stopped her before she could leave, "Tell John 'thank you' for me." _Thank you for putting her back together_, he thought silently.

"I will," she promised.


	7. August 2

Disclaimer: not mine 

a/n: this story will be the death of me. but i will finish it soon...soonish...eventually.

**August**

9th

He was attempting to scrub a stain out of one of his older shirts with a rag dipped in detergent when there was a knock on the door. He scanned the space around him quickly, making sure the clutter that littered his floor wasn't anything of a too embarrassing nature. After shoving a couple of dirty boxer briefs under his bed he grinned and called, "Come in."

"Hello, John," she greeted, stepping in through the now opened door, his smile dimming from sunshine to twilight with record speed.

Storm raised her eyebrows at his blatant disappointment, "Expecting someone else?" she mused.

"Maybe a different female," he shrugged.

"Well," Storm responded, drifting into the room so much like the breezes she controlled and sat at his desk chair, "Kitty's downstairs working out with Logan."

Now it was John's turn to raise his eyebrows but decided to keep any further comments to himself. There was always something slightly unnerving about the older woman that compelled John to run his mouth less than he usually tended to. He didn't trust her and she knew it, probably finding that preferable since she didn't trust him either. John felt that, despite the fact that her mutation gave her other gifts, that she could see and read every thought in his head and was filing them away until she needed those pieces of information. To do what? He didn't know, but he knew it would be messy.

"What are you doing?" she wondered lightly, gesturing to the shirt in his hands. He held up the fabric so she could study the dark brown smudge that ran down the left side.

"Looks like blood," she stated, her eyes darting from his face to the shirt several times.

He nodded, swallowing hard, "Probably. It usually is, you know."

"John, I," Storm began, her voice a little thin and tight from any combination of barely restrained emotions. "None of this is easy for me. Not just what's happened this past year, but letting you be here, that's not easy for me to deal with. It's not a secret that I don't want you _anywhere_ near this school."

"Then why did you let me stay?" he spat.

"Because I like the idea of you anywhere else even less. Because it's what," she huffed out a breath, "Because it's what he would have done. He would have given you a second chance and I haven't forgotten yet that this is still _his_ place, his home."

"He's not coming back, Storm," John reminded her gently, with sympathy, a feat he was surprised he could accomplish considering her less than affectionate words.

"Jean came back," she countered.

John laughed, the biting hysterical edge of it startling her, John could see the muscles in her legs and shoulders tense, like she was preparing to fight, "Do you really want him to if he's going to be like Phoenix? You didn't spend as much time with her as I did. She never...Jean never really came back either."

"I miss him," she admitted softly.

"Me too," he whispered.

She nodded, chewing the inside of her cheek while John stared helplessly at the damaged cloth in his lap, trying to remember all the times he had bled on himself and wondering which time it was that made this mess.

"I want to trust you, someday maybe I will, if you stick around long enough for that. But for now, I just don't know where you stand."

He decided then, even though she wouldn't like the answer, to tell her the truth. If the thoughts in his head and the words that left his mouth would someday be ammunition is her arsenal against him, he would rather them be whole truths and not lies that sounded pretty.

"Neither do I," he confessed.

She got up to leave, pausing just inside the door frame, leaning against the wood to look at him again. "Peroxide and cold water," she told him, nodding towards the shirt, "You'll probably need to know that in the next week."

"Why's that?"

"I got a call this morning, Bobby and Rogue are coming home in a few days."

"Oh...well, _thanks_," he shouted sarcastically as she walked away.

12th

"They're here."

He didn't move from his position, standing hunched over by the window, straining his eyes to see the sunset just beyond the trees. He could still make out glimmers and specks of violent orange behind layers of leaves and it left him strangely unsatisfied. It wasn't enough and he didn't know when it had stopped. The glowing sun and the words of wiser men. The fire that had burned in his veins for as long as he could remember, guiding his every move and action, and the simple, undefinable way the air in the room sharpened and held still whenever Kitty walked in, somehow it just wasn't enough anymore.

"I don't care."

"Liar."

"Whatever."

Whatever.

Bobby Drake was back. And Rogue with him. The two people he had spent that past dozen months efficiently convincing himself that he felt absolutely nothing for. And now they were again under the same roof that had forced them together a lifetime before. It hadn't been much of an effort to stay out of their way for the handful of days they had still been in the mansion when he had first arrived, but something told him the situation had _changed._

It wouldn't be long before someone enlightened the Iceman and Sweet Marie to who John had been spending all of his time with.

Everything was only a matter of time and now that the sunset was finally over, that was a little easier for him to accept.

"Will you at least walk downstairs with me?" she asked, sighing.

"No," he answered easily, quietly, and he still didn't look at her because he would either see her face fall or absolute indifference, and both would hurt him in ways that still didn't make sense.

He squinted again, scanning the canopy of the trees for any sign of the sun, almost willing to stand there until afternoon brought the star hanging bright and heavy over his head.

"He'll hate you, you know," he said suddenly, sighing at his lack of tact, subtlety, "He wont understand. Hell, _I _don't even understand what this is."

"I don't care."

"Liar."

"Whatever."

He chuckled thinly, turning away from his window and slumping onto his bed, finally catching sight of Kitty, her shadow standing by the door. He had barely settled himself against the wall when she was next to him, mimicking his position with feminine twists.

"I like your room."

"Thanks."

"But we can't hide in here forever, John. It doesn't _work_ that way."

He shoved himself off the bed quickly, her words registering in his brain like coins clattering on a tabletop, sharp and ringing. He threw himself back to the window, restless with worry and snapping aggressive energy. Because something was wrong with him now and he couldn't stomach being close to her. Not when...

Bobby _fucking_ Drake.

_They will take you away from me._

It was too soon, it was way too goddamn soon for them to be in the same room and be able to even play at civility. It was too soon for him to look at John and see anything but snow and dyed blonde hair and a Judas to Xavier's Christ.

He pressed his forehead against the window, "Yes I can, Kitty."

"_No,_ we can't-"

"There is no 'we' in this, Katherine!" John suddenly yelled, rounding back to the bed. "Not with him. Not with Bobby and Rogue! There will be no forgiveness there! They will look at me and they'll...They will hate me. And if there is an 'us' or a 'we,' they will hate you too. Did you even think about that? Are you at all ready for that?"

_They will take you away from me. They'll convince you that I'm nothing and they will take you away from me. I can't ask you, I won't ask you, to be hated. Not for me._

"Then we'll _make_ them understand," Kitty argued, shaking a little as she walked to his side, grabbing his shoulder and forcing him to face her.

"Why?"

"Because we have to. Because this hasn't been about just me or just you for a while now."

John nodded after a moment, wondering when exactly it was that she gained the ability to make decisions for him, to speak in heartbreaking absolutes. She could make the pretty lies he refused to tell sound righteous and golden, humming with honesty that he had no right to be near. He pushed the loose strands of her hair behind her ears, hoping she couldn't see the doubt on him, feel the fear.

But she must have because she began again, striving to reassure, "We will make them under-"

He couldn't bear to hear it a second time, hear her make a promise that terrified him because he wanted her to mean it. But how was he supposed to put his faith in the tones of her voice when _they will take you away from me._

So he kissed her instead, firmly cupping her face and drawing it up to meet him, stroking her temples and moving his lips over hers, asking for comfort without words. Words sounded and disappeared, but this, this could go on forever if she let it. If she chose him over...

_Not for me, never for me._

When they broke apart she buried her face in his neck, smiling against his skin and her body seemed to breathe the word _finally._

Everything was only a matter of time but John didn't care because the only light coming in from outside was the dim glow of the city, miles away.

"I know we can't hide in here forever. But can we hide in here for now?"

"Yeah," she whispered into his shirt and he found he could believe in that.

_Never for me._


End file.
